


Freedom’s a Funny Thing

by robocryptid



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Sex Magic, Shapeshifting, Tricksters, myth//legend, some good old fashioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 02:56:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20382520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robocryptid/pseuds/robocryptid
Summary: Once a year, magician Hanzo must perform a ritual to bind the dragon spirits to himself. This year, something about the ritual doesn't quite go right, and he summons a trickster along with the dragons. Now he's stuck with the stowaway until he can figure out how to dismiss him. Luckily McCree seems mostly benign, if irritating and predisposed to dressing as a cowboy.—Originally for the Myth//Legend zine, but now with a couple bonus scenes. Consider this the director’s cut.





	Freedom’s a Funny Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Since I am sometimes asked: you have my blanket permission to podfic, translate or remix my stuff, make fan art, make fanmixes, etc. -- basically anything that qualifies as transformative works! You don't have to ask me. The only thing I do ask is that you share it with me, because I wanna see/hear/read it! 
> 
> What you do not have permission to do is wholesale copy and repost my fic to a different platform, such as a third-party app that profits from free fan labor. If you are reading this on an app like that, I assure you AO3's website on mobile is perfectly robust, allows downloads of fics for offline reading, has a [dark mode skin](https://archiveofourown.org/skins/929), and isn't trying to scam you by offering premium services that change nothing.#
> 
> \--
> 
> Thank you so so so so so much to Das and YourAverageJoke for being such awesome artists and people. They were a delight to work with. I’ll link the art in the end notes too, because they’re gorgeous and you shouldn’t miss it. Both are NSFW pieces. 
> 
> 1\. [YourAverageJoke’s illustration](https://twitter.com/yournaughtyjoke/status/1165453769494224896?s=21)  
2\. [Das’ illustration](https://twitter.com/knif_bullets/status/1167794423985516544?s=20)

#

Hanzo repeated the steps of the ritual to himself, scrutinized for every possible flaw: performed in a cave by the sea, where the rock met the water, when the day met the night, when winter neared spring and a storm was in the air. No, that wasn’t it. The power crackling beneath his skin said he had chosen the time and place well. That the dragons were bound to him at all suggested the spell itself had gone right, and so it should; he had practiced the steps since childhood, long before he was trusted to perform the ritual proper.

“Don’t overthink it,” said the creature, leaned back with its dirty boots propped on his desk. Insouciant thing. It blew a thick cloud of smoke at him and smiled wide behind the haze; it may have looked like a man, but its incisors were a hair too sharp to be believed. “How I got here’s not the fun part.”

“Then tell me what you are.”

“What do you see?”

“An intruder.”

It chuckled, a warm sound, pleasant and all the more unsettling for it. “Humor me, darlin’. I can’t see myself. You made sure of that.” It sounded amused, just as it had when Hanzo had thrown the spell to hide their reflections, unable to trust an unknown entity with a mirror.

“I see a scruffy cowboy,” Hanzo admitted warily. “I’ve answered your question. Now tell me what you are.”

It laughed again and rose to its feet, drew closer to him through the smoke, too much for a single cigar. “Why should I share what you already know?” Hanzo began to protest, but it cut him off with a quiet _ tsk._ “You dreamed about me, didn’t you?”

Hanzo could taste the smoke on his tongue, spicy and cloyingly sweet, and he thought of the only dream that mattered, the first of the new year: a sky full of stars and a forest lined with campfires, the silhouettes of too many faceless men, some small and squat, some sleek and lanky, with animal limbs or too _ many _ limbs or too many fingers. There had been animals too: spiders in the trees and rabbits underfoot and ravens in the air, and wild dogs of every kind. Foxes yipping, and wolves howling, and above them all a high siren yowling, bone-chilling then and now. 

“You know what I am,” it said, eyes flashing like copper.

“Yes,” Hanzo said.

“Good. I like ’em clever.”

* * *

Hanzo returned their reflections. It would be foolish to anger a trickster, and more foolish to let pride convince him he could _ control _one. But better this McCree, as he called himself, than something more decisively malign. 

McCree admired himself in the mirror, a hand in his own beard. “Handsome devil, ain’t I?” 

He glanced sideways at Hanzo with a wink, smiled with his too-sharp teeth. Devilishly handsome indeed. “And modest, I see,” Hanzo said. McCree’s low chuckle slid under Hanzo’s skin and made the dragons purr. “You are a shapeshifter. Are you so enamored by this form?”

“Maybe I take on the shape that’s most appealing to the beholder.”

“To what, seduce them?” 

“Your guess says more ’bout you than me, magician.” He flashed another knowing smile, and Hanzo felt himself flush. “Maybe I remind them sometimes of an old friend, a mentor, a relative.” McCree’s laugh was breezy this time. “The family pet.” Then he moved toward Hanzo, trapped him with the flash of his eyes, bright like new pennies. “What about this appeals to you?”

Rather than answer, Hanzo attempted a spell. It should have revealed McCree’s true form, but it died on Hanzo’s fingertips, left his knuckles aching. “_Rude,_” McCree snapped. He swiftly crowded Hanzo backward, fists rattling the bookshelf as they landed to either side of Hanzo’s head. “I should _ eat _you for that,” he said, and his teeth seemed somehow sharper.

Another spell withered in Hanzo’s throat, and his hands went numb with unspent power. The space between their bodies crackled like the magic that refused to obey. Hanzo was certain he would die. McCree pushed in too close, bared his teeth and then did nothing else at all. 

“You can’t,” Hanzo said at the same time he realized, and McCree made a low sound in his throat, eyes narrowing, but still he did not touch Hanzo. 

Hanzo thought of the ritual, of the dragons. They were bound to him, able to harm only his enemies, and he could not harm them in turn. He thought about pushing McCree away, and his hands couldn’t move. He thought instead of a question: can I?

Hanzo placed his hand carefully on McCree’s chest, felt it connect with the fabric and muscle beneath it, and the dragons inside him gave an unsettling murmur of approval. 

McCree glanced at the hand, and Hanzo could feel the heartbeat under his palm, solid and steady and far too human. Clever, gleaming eyes rose to meet Hanzo’s again, and McCree’s mouth curved into a slow smile. He trailed a finger from Hanzo’s temple to jaw, and Hanzo’s pulse jumped.

“Well, ain’t that somethin’?” 

* * *

The rules were unclear. Hanzo found the prospect unnerving, particularly with a creature known for bending rules in the first place. McCree could not leave the apartment without Hanzo, though he could be left behind. Outside, he had to remain practically within eyesight; Hanzo watched, bemused, as McCree tried to round a corner and simply stood there instead.

McCree couldn’t hurt him, either deliberately or by accident. Neither could McCree’s magic do any harm, although McCree was too cagey about the details for Hanzo to discover much else. But Hanzo’s mind was his own and that, at least, was a comfort. 

McCree hovered while Hanzo researched, peered over his shoulder at the desk, smelling of campfire and earth and the sweet-spicy smoke from the cigars he produced seemingly from nowhere. That Hanzo’s mind was wholly his own was perhaps not _ entirely _comforting, he amended, pulse hammering away.

“It would be helpful to know how you got here,” Hanzo said, minding his tone. Like all his kind, McCree was quick to laugh and quick to anger, though he had not threatened Hanzo again. 

“You opened the door. I walked through.” 

“You should not have been able.” It was what half the precautions were for — not to summon the dragons, but to protect himself from uninvited guests, demons and spirits and all manner of things.

“Don’t fret, darlin’. Your ritual was perfect.” McCree sounded amused, voice as warm as the breath that puffed against Hanzo’s ear. “But so was mine.”

Startled, Hanzo turned his head sharply, felt the boundary twist and flex to avoid their faces colliding. “_You _bound us—”

McCree let out a low laugh that Hanzo felt in his blood. “That was you. I only took the first door that opened.” 

Impulsive, if it were true. It would fit the nature of his kind. Besides, everything Hanzo had read said McCree could dodge and mislead, but he couldn’t _ lie_. “I bound us.” It meant that Hanzo had a chance to _ un_bind them as well.

“Yes,” McCree said, trailing ticklish fingers up Hanzo’s exposed forearm. Every hair stood on end in their wake. McCree seemed fascinated by it.

“Then you have my apologies,” Hanzo said stiffly. 

McCree grinned and looked back up. His other hand slid along Hanzo’s shoulder to his neck, thumb rubbing along the base of Hanzo’s skull. “There are worse fates,” he said, barely audible over the drumbeat of Hanzo’s heart.

“Such as?” Hanzo asked, steady as he could. Even now, he couldn’t fight his curiosity.

“I could be bound to someone boring.” McCree still smiled, and his fingers curled over the back of Hanzo’s knuckles, around the side of his neck, eyes on Hanzo’s mouth.

McCree was going to kiss him. Hanzo could see it as plain on his face as on any other man’s. Unlike with any other man, Hanzo could feel the buzz of their magic between them, the roar of adrenaline inside him. McCree might be bound by indefinable rules now, but he was still dangerous. Tricksters were not known for their mercy; in all the stories, humans were victims and playthings. At best one might bestow favors, although that seemed more often a product of capriciousness than benevolence.

Hanzo wet his lips and McCree watched the movement as he drew closer. 

“Stop,” Hanzo said hoarsely, and suddenly McCree was not touching him at all. The immediacy of it suggested the boundary had shoved him out. 

McCree drew back sharply. Hanzo thought for a moment that the trickster might threaten to eat him again. But he looked more petulant than angry, gaze flicking from Hanzo to his own hands. 

Hanzo wondered if he should say more. Before he could make up his mind, the air around McCree warped and popped. McCree himself twisted and shrank. It lasted as long as a blink, but it was grotesque to watch. Black wings fluttered and the raven flew off to perch at the top of the bookcase. 

It seemed McCree’s magic still worked, so long as it wasn’t on Hanzo. Hanzo made a careful note of it in his journal while black, beady eyes stared down at him.

* * *

“If you wish to break this, it would help to know more about you,” Hanzo said. McCree eyed him suspiciously through his smoke. He hadn’t yet recovered from Hanzo’s flex of power, although to call it a grudge seemed to misname the problem. “Where you came from. How you got here. Anything might help.”

“I told you I took the first door I found.”

“From _ where_?”

McCree’s eyes glinted as he looked Hanzo over again, but he seemed satisfied somehow by what he saw. “There’s a world between worlds. Between dark and light. Between life and death.” The smoke curled around him again, a protective cloud. “Plenty of spirits there. Things like your dragons, things like me. Things you’d go mad tryin’ to make sense of.”

“And this place is—”

“My home.” 

“Yet you wanted to leave.”

McCree smiled to himself. It was a lonely, contemplative sort of smile, and Hanzo felt a surprising pang of sympathy. “It’s my home and I was trapped there,” he answered after a moment, “by a particularly nasty witch in old Éire.”

Hanzo felt strangely offended; there was something perverse about stealing the freedom of a spirit such as this. “You wished to escape badly enough that you risked _ this_” — Hanzo gestured to himself — “or much worse. Was your home so bad?” 

“No. Nothing can die there, and there’s no pain. And it’s beautiful.” McCree stood closer now, directed Hanzo’s attention toward the window. McCree rested a warm hand at his back, thumb stroking lightly at the base of his spine. “Endless twilight and a sky full of stars,” McCree said, low and close. Hanzo could taste the smoke again. “But never the sun or moon. No sense of tide or time. No warmth on your skin. Nothin’ dead but nothin’ truly alive either.” McCree let out a quiet, mournful laugh, nuzzling just above Hanzo’s ear. “Tell me how long you think you could last like that.”

Hanzo thought he should will him away, push the boundary back again; he did nothing at all. He remembered how it had felt to realize his own home was a trap. McCree’s touch made his skin buzz, pulse racing just under the surface, and Hanzo let himself be pawed at right by the window in broad daylight. Hanzo turned to find McCree’s face too close, found his own eyes drawn to McCree’s mouth. The teeth didn’t seem so sharp now. Too human.

“Not long,” Hanzo answered hoarsely.

* * *

Hanzo still found him wandering about the apartment as all manner of animal: lounging in a patch of sunlight as a fat orange cat; bounding through the halls as a massive hare; staring out at the moon as a wolf, wet nose pressed against the window. Hanzo once thought McCree’d managed to get out on his own until he found the huge spiderweb in the corner of the study. It was difficult to determine whether “blow me” was an insult or an invitation, but as the day wore on, the increasingly lewd and _ elaborate _ phrases spun into the web suggested the latter. Hanzo was begrudgingly impressed.

Even so, the more he learned and the more frustrating dead ends they found in their research, the harder it became to think of McCree as some sort of _ creature_. McCree went out of his way to remind Hanzo he wasn’t human, but he seemed closer to that than to any kind of monster. McCree was often bored and restless, impatient with their slow research and the stress of his captivity. 

Hanzo did his best to assure McCree that he was working as quickly as he could. It wasn’t only to put off his endless pestering. Hanzo had been raised to rule with an iron fist, and even he could see the wrongness of controlling an entity like this. It was unnatural. Hanzo felt the profanity of it deep in his bones. 

His respect for the general essence of the problem did little to assuage his irritation with McCree on a more personal level. McCree pushed incessantly, flirted incorrigibly. Any time Hanzo forgot to mind the boundary, McCree touched him. Some seemed purposeful, as though he were warming Hanzo to his touch like an easily spooked horse. Most appeared entirely thoughtless. The passage of time often confused McCree, but Hanzo pieced together enough to estimate he’d been trapped for several centuries before Hanzo’s spell; many of McCree’s touches seemed to be a corrective for his profound loneliness, and that, Hanzo told himself, was why he endured them.

They discussed it sometimes. Hanzo was not comfortable with McCree, but he was learning the limits of what would irritate him. He knew, then, which questions he could ask, and which should remain unspoken. 

“Is the bond why you are like this?”

McCree simply raised his eyebrows.

“Why you _ flirt_,” Hanzo clarified.

“Is that a real question?” His voice dipped low and his eyes made a shameless sweep of Hanzo’s body. “Modesty doesn’t suit you, darlin’.”

Despite his best efforts, Hanzo flushed. “Surely you have met creatures more attractive to you than humans.”

“Well, you’re no gorgon, but you have your charms.” Whatever the look on Hanzo’s face, it made McCree laugh. “Are you worried my intentions are impure?”

Hanzo snorted. “I am worried the bond has altered your behavior. Made you malleable, perhaps. Made you want things you would not otherwise.”

“Do _you _want things you would not otherwise? Or should not?” He smiled and his teeth seemed too sharp again. Infuriating. 

“I am asking for the sake of your well-being and for our research. I would appreciate an answer.”

“I am myself, as much as anyone can guarantee they are who they believe they are.” He pushed out of his seat, and he circled Hanzo with that prowling gait he had. “If you cared about my well-being, you would take me somewhere. I’m bored.”

In truth, there was nowhere in particular Hanzo could think to take him, but he allowed him to tag along on the next trip to the market. McCree did not _ do _anything that Hanzo could see, but somehow every vendor offered bargains so ludicrous that Hanzo nearly felt guilty when he paid. 

Somehow too all the rudest customers were subject to an array of minor embarrassments: dropping their groceries, tripping into things, all trivial chaos that could be attributed to simple bad luck if not for the sheer ubiquity. A weaselly, well-dressed man pushed abruptly past Hanzo, all elbows, without any sign of remorse. A moment later, the man shouted in disgust, wiping furiously at the white droppings from the pigeons high overhead. 

“That’s unfortunate,” McCree said. It was the only time he acknowledged any of the absurdities around them. “Ice cream?” he asked, holding out a second cone. Hanzo neither asked how he had paid for it nor admitted to the smile threatening to break his composure.

The moment lasted only until Hanzo watched another stranger fall and crack his skull, blood pooling rapidly beneath his head while the crowd roiled with panic. McCree’s tricks were no longer so amusing after that. 

Still, Hanzo could not quite shake the sense that the man had probably deserved it.

He did try to broach the subject later, once they had returned to the apartment. “Those people in the market—”

McCree’s laugh was as sharp as his teeth. “Have you forgotten what I am?”

“No. Never.” It was impossible to. Even in his most human moments, McCree’s eyes gave him away. “I am not a good man.”

“No. You’re not. What of it?”

Hanzo could smell that smoke again, although McCree did not have a cigar. “Am I the sort of man you’d want to die in the marketplace?”

McCree laughed, mischievous and remorseless both, like a child who had played a simple prank. It said a great deal about Hanzo’s current state that he allowed the hand on his cheek. “You’ve done the research. Tell me yourself.”

“You punish them. Us.”

“Not all of you. Who?” McCree’s thumb traced his jaw, and Hanzo could no longer bear to look.

He closed his eyes and spoke. “Liars. Hypocrites. Arrogant fools. Those who prey on the weak. Guilty people who feel no guilt.” He swallowed around a tongue thick with the taste of spicy smoke.

“Are you any of these things?”

Hanzo considered it. He had been all of those things once. But _ guilt _in particular was hardened and set within him now. “No,” he rasped. “I don’t think so.”

“See?” McCree chuckled, and Hanzo’s breath shuddered out over the thumb dragging across his lip. “You’re safe with me.”

He did not believe that for a minute.

* * *

This time, McCree smoked and lurked behind him at the desk, fingers petting idly through Hanzo’s hair while Hanzo squinted at his tablet’s translation of another old scroll. 

“Must you?” Hanzo asked. 

“I’m bored.”

“You could help.” Hanzo gestured at the desk, cluttered with books and papers.

McCree’s hand briefly stilled. “I could,” he said slowly, as if it were a revelation that this would go better as a two-person job. His fingers picked up their petting again, distracting when they brushed the back of Hanzo’s neck. It tingled, something like static racing down Hanzo’s spine. “I can make you stronger.”

Agitation and arousal in equal measure warred within him. “That was the point of the ritual, yes.”

“I’m not one of your dragons,” McCree groused, but it seemed half-hearted. “But I can do it. Make you strong enough to break the bond. _If_ you trust me.” 

“And you are only just realizing?”

“No. Just realizing that you might actually agree now.” He pulled Hanzo’s hair gently, guided Hanzo’s gaze to his own, and he smiled his sharp, hungry smile. “Care to make a deal?”

* * *

Hanzo adjusted the tie of his robe, eyeing McCree with some skepticism. He’d agreed to this, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten McCree’s nature. Even so, he could feel it under his skin, both the truth of McCree’s claims about their powers and the desire that had coiled since the trickster arrived.

McCree lit all the candles in the room with a wave of his hand. Something about his smile made Hanzo suspicious. 

“Part of your ritual?” Hanzo asked.

“No.” McCree’s grin got wider. “That’s just for atmosphere.” Despite himself, Hanzo laughed.

The smell of fire followed, but it wasn’t the scent of burning candles. It smelled of campfire and the spicy smoke of McCree’s cigars. The room quickly grew foggy with it, and McCree stood nude and gleaming in the midst of it all, right at the foot of Hanzo’s bed. 

Hanzo could feel the energy crackling between them already. McCree reached out a hand to pull him closer, and Hanzo hesitated. He wasn’t nervous exactly — he was no blushing virgin, and even the transactionary motive wasn’t entirely new — but McCree was powerful and close, and there was something uncanny about the way the smoke clung and shifted around them.

“Getting cold feet?” McCree asked, all sharp teeth and glittering eyes. Light bounced and diffused off the haze until he seemed, briefly, to have an aura about him, in the shape of one of his animals_. _Fox or wolf or coyote didn’t seem to matter; all were tricksters somewhere in the world. Hanzo wondered if that was the real shape, the one McCree still hadn’t shown him.

“Hardly,” Hanzo answered, distracted. McCree only chuckled deep in his chest. It seemed to ring in Hanzo’s head.

McCree had warned him with surprising frankness that the ritual would be intense. That Hanzo might feel any number of strange things, might see things he shouldn’t. Still, he didn’t expect it to begin immediately, didn’t expect that hazy aura. He didn’t expect that when McCree’s fingers brushed down the front of his robe, it would feel as though a trail of sparks followed. 

Hanzo held still while McCree undid the knot in his sash. Hanzo thought he should be embarrassed by his own reaction, but the first touch of McCree’s hands on his _ skin _ made him hiss through his teeth and arch helplessly into it. The energy of both their magics seemed to crackle between them, to dive into Hanzo’s bones and to fill his head with static.

Hanzo stood frozen, trying desperately to adjust to the feeling, though he feared he might only be gaping. McCree seemed amused by it, petting at him and watching intently as if he wished to savor every reaction. It seemed as if another, lighter hand trailed in the wake of his real fingers, curiously ticklish after the firmer touch. McCree’s other thumb dragged over his bottom lip, and Hanzo felt the aftersense again, felt it dip into his mouth even when McCree’s thumb didn’t. It tasted the way the smoke smelled: cloyingly sweet, like someone had thrown incense and cloves into a campfire. The taste was as heady as inhaling it.

McCree stared at his mouth again, eyes heavy-lidded. Hanzo thought they were pretty, however strange the color and the inhuman shine to them might be; they looked like something a dragon ought to hoard. Light-headed as he was, the thought almost made him laugh, and McCree’s lips twitched too.

“I want to kiss you,” Hanzo said, then felt immediately self-conscious at McCree’s surprise. He hadn’t entirely meant to say it, and it seemed an odd request when they were already this close. Neither was it strictly necessary; the ritual required sex, not intimacy. It could be as practical or primal as any other spell. Any other transaction. Perhaps that was all McCree had offered.

Yet he’d also promised it would feel _ good, _that he meant for Hanzo to enjoy it. He followed through on this promise.

McCree tasted the same as the smoke, sweet and dizzying, mouth as feverishly hot as his hands. McCree’s tongue curled against his and Hanzo felt it all the way to his toes. He surged forward, shaken from his earlier stupor by his need to touch. Hanzo’s fingers dragged through the hair over his chest and belly, and McCree was scalding here too, a furnace under Hanzo’s hands. 

McCree dragged him closer, grip trailed by the tingling phantom touch. The smoke pressed close, curled against his skin like a living thing, and Hanzo shuddered into McCree’s arms, gasped into the press of his mouth. Magic still thrummed between them; Hanzo could feel it in his blood and on his skin. 

The smoke stuffed his head full, rendered him dizzy and delirious. He couldn’t have said how he got from there to the bed, astride McCree and pressed close as he could. He could only comprehend snatches of it: the sense of McCree’s hands on him, everywhere at once, his mouth searing brands into Hanzo’s skin. Hanzo only realized he still wore the robe when the fabric slipped to bare his shoulders, the sudden air a shivering torment across his overheated skin. Then McCree’s mouth was at his throat, and there were hands in his hair and dragging up his back and clutching at his hips and spreading him wider, too overwhelming for further complaints.

Smoke licked at his mouth and nipples, at his spine, at the hole McCree’s kneading grip continually exposed, at the crown of his cock. It was almost more input than Hanzo could follow, too many touches against too much sensitive flesh. His skin felt tight, like he could burst out of it at any moment, and that was before he felt the slow, insistent slide of slick fingers between his cheeks and inside him.

Hanzo’s eyes fluttered closed, a low, wounded sound punched out of him. He could feel the phantom sense of hands on the insides of his thighs, a drag of unseen fingers that made the muscles twitch and sent sensation skittering straight to his cock. The heat on his skin was nigh unbearable, McCree’s body scorching against his, and still it was nothing compared to the blazing fire at his core, swirling in his gut and threatening to burn him from the inside out. 

McCree’s mouth at his throat burned more sweetly than the rest, the brush of his beard almost painful against taut, feverish skin. Hanzo dislodged his clasping mouth when he rolled forward, McCree’s fingers suddenly not enough; they seemed to taunt him instead, some feeble approximation of the fullness McCree’s thick cock promised. McCree caught on without words, coaxing and cradling him as Hanzo lifted up, bracing him with a shocking gentleness as he began to sink slowly down.

Hanzo felt himself gasp, another noise shaken from his chest only to be swallowed by McCree’s mouth on his. McCree held him close, too many hands on him and all of them too tender, as they moved together, slow and luxurious in the smoky, sultry heat of the room. Hanzo could feel the air still crackling between them, the fire within him building alongside the growling thrum of unspent magic, relentless and impossible to contain. He felt it sparking from shaking fingertips and curling toes, racing up his spine and out his mouth where it touched McCree’s, incapable of more than panting open-mouthed brushes of his lips now.

It felt like no fever he’d ever had before, spiraling inside him until he thought he might burst. McCree had said it would be too much for one human to bear for long, and Hanzo could feel the truth of it even as it grew stronger, but it felt impossibly good too, McCree filling him and moving sweetly inside, holding him adoringly while that smoke still brushed and flicked at him all over. Hanzo clutched hard at McCree’s sweat-slick shoulder and shook apart in his arms.

Even after McCree came, sent another surge of magic through him and the room around them, the fire still raged, filling his body beyond its limits. He couldn’t even bring himself to part with McCree before he had to release all that writhed beneath his skin. He cupped McCree’s face in trembling hands, thumbs framing his strange, beautiful eyes, and he gasped the words McCree had taught him, released all the pent-up power in a single white-hot burst.

* * *

Hanzo came to in his bed, aching and fatigued. The smoke had dissipated, most of the candles burned down. He sensed with an unshakable certainty that the ritual had worked. The bond was broken, and he was as alone as he could be. The dragons moved under his skin, and they almost seemed to grieve. He wondered if they missed McCree, thought of him as a kindred soul; his home was the same as theirs.

Hanzo was tucked under the covers, a glass of water beside the bed. His robe was folded at the foot of the bed. It seemed McCree had put some thought into how best to leave him. Hanzo refused to allow himself to regret that he had done the right thing for once.

He returned to his usual business, and he did his best not to check every room for spiderwebs. The faintest scent of campfire and spicy smoke lingered in the apartment, wafting out when he opened a drawer or door, absorbed into the fabric of his clothes. He thought it might never leave his sheets.

The apartment had always been spacious, large enough for a study he spent too much time in and a kitchen he rarely used and a guest room no one ever stayed in. Now it felt cavernous. 

For three days, he avoided thinking about homes that felt like cages. His body recovered. His magic felt far stronger now — McCree’s end of their bargain — and he tested its new limits to occupy himself.

On the fourth day, Hanzo found McCree in the study, kicked back with his boots on the desk.

“Freedom’s a funny thing,” McCree said.

“How so?”

“Finally got it, then realized I had nowhere better to be.” McCree looked contrite; it didn’t suit him, but it did weaken Hanzo’s defenses. “And I thought. If there _ was _somewhere better to be, maybe I’d still rather find it with your company.”

Hanzo could see a dozen available options, and a dozen reasons to remain wary too. None of them seemed to matter. 

“There are many places I’ve never been because I lacked the right companion,” Hanzo began, and McCree’s mouth curled into a slow sharp-toothed smile.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please also make sure you check out the artists’ work and give them some love, then poke around looking for the rest of the Myth//Legend works at the @mythmchanzo Twitter!
> 
> 1\. [YourAverageJoke’s illustration](https://twitter.com/yournaughtyjoke/status/1165453769494224896?s=21)  
2\. [Das’ illustration](https://twitter.com/knif_bullets/status/1167794423985516544?s=20)
> 
> PS I once described the sex in this fic as “the tasteful sideboob of tentacle sex,” so that’s a phrase that you’ve been forced to read now.


End file.
